Management | Short-Answer Questions

Running head: MANAGEMENT
Management
Name of the student
Name of the university
Author Note:

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Part A: Short answer questions:
Answer 1.
Part a.
Barilla was facing marketing issues. This was because the existing logistics partners of
the firm did not take into account the demand in the market prior to planning the supply of raw
materials for its products like pasta. A diagnosis of the problem showed that this often led to over
production and under production. The company under both the situations suffered losses.
The just in time distribution strategy had several benefits for Barilla. First of all, it
ensures that logistics partners delivered appropriate quantities of raw materials so that
appropriate amount of finished products could be manufactured. This led to higher profits and
lower inventory holding costs.
Part b.
The internal conflict which Barilla faced was due to the logistics partners. They did not
want to implement JITD. Maggili should deal with the conflict by training and mentoring the
logistics partners.
Part c.
As a customer, the response to JITD would be positive. This is because JITD would
enable the firm make appropriate amount of finished goods like pasta available in the market.

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This would lead to fall in the price of pasta and related food products which would ultimately
benefit the consumers.
Part d.
JITD would be feasible. The target customers would be middle and upper class
customers. The company would use promotion to convince the customers.
Part e.
The JITD strategies developed by Toyota is far advanced compared to other firms using
it.
Answer 2:
Business organizations need to reduce their respective lead times in order to make more
goods and service to their customers. Fattahi, Govindan and Keyvanshokooh (2017) mention that
business organizations have to design their respective supply chains in order to minimize their
leads. In other words, they have to shorten the time gap between placing orders for inventory of
raw materials and/or work-in-progress and receiving the delivery of the same. The raw materials
and WIP are then channelized into manufacturing of finished goods, which are in turned
marketed in the market to generate profit. Christopher (2016) defines the term supply chain
management as ‘The management of upstream and downstream relationships with
suppliers and customers to deliver superior customer value at less cost to the supply chain
as a whole.’ Thus, it is clear from the explanation that it is extremely important for business
organizations to reduce their lead times within their supply chains in order to make more goods
and services available downstream at more affordable to create value to the customers. The

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following are the five ways which business organizations can reduce their lead times within their
supply chains:
Local sourcing of raw materials and work-in-progress:
Local sourcing of raw materials and work-in-progress goods can enable the
manufacturing companies shorten the lead times within their supply chains. The multinational
companies like Nestle market their food products in more than a 100 nations in the world
including its home country namely, Switzerland (Nestle.in. 2020). This means that company has
to cater to the needs of the customers in all these nations. If the company were to source all the
raw materials and WIPs or even finished goods to cater to these markets, it would require
immense lead-time. The situation would be even more challenging in cases of nations like
Australia and India having their resident dairy companies capable of competing with Nestle. For
example, Australia is the home to Pure Dairy Pty Limited (Puredairy.com. 2020). Similarly,
India is the home to Amul (Amul.com. 2020). Thus, if Nestle fails to make finished products
available in these highly competitive markets like India and Australia owing to high lead-time in
its food supply chains, it would lose its customers to the resident dairy companies in these
markets. Thus, it one can establish on the ground of this analysis that companies like Nestle can
reduce the lead times in its supply chains by adopting the strategy of local sourcing. They can
source the raw materials and WIPs in order to cater to the needs of particular host markets from
within the host markets concerned. For example, Nestle in order to cater to Australia, can source
raw materials and WIPs like milk and sugar from within Australia. This would enable the
company to make products available in these markets with minimum lead-time.